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It took me some time, a lot of good theology and personal experience of a loving God before I could lay to rest the fear I had of a wrathful God who was out to get me! I can well remember a preacher on Good Friday in my early twenties who flung his arms towards the big crucifix, like the one above the screen here and shouted, See what you have done to Jesus! Mm, I thought, I would rather see the Crucifix as a sign of something that Jesus did for me.
But what exactly did Jesus do for me that Good Friday, and which I celebrate with the Church once again on this Easter Day.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that not one single Christian was saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That may surprise you but on the day that Jesus rose from the dead the founding of the Christian Church was some time in the future. That took place at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit, falling on the Apostles and the other followers of Jesus, commissioned them to be the Church of Jesus Christ on earth. It would be some time after then that these early followers of Jesus were to be called Christians, at a place called Antioch. So, the personal salvation of Christians was not on the menu that first Easter morning.
So what was on the menu? The favourite reading on Easter Day is that of the Risen Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalen in the garden of the tomb as told by St. John. Peter and John had popped along, seen the empty tomb and dashed off again, presumably to share their news with the other disciples, though Peter might have been a bit wary of meeting Jesus again because of his three denials. Mary remained in the garden and her love and loyalty was rewarded by a quiet and deeply personal appearance.
Matthew chose a much more spectacular way of telling the Resurrection. It has all the hallmarks of a block-buster movie. Earthquake, Descending angel from heaven like lightening, great stone rolled away, guards collapsing and angelic conversation with the two Marys. Follow up – meeting with the Risen Jesus whose simple Greetings! had them falling down before him in worship, mixed with a lovely intimate gesture of holding him around the ankles.
This is a beautiful scene of friends re-united after the cataclysmic event of the Crucifixion. Their fear at seeing the stone rolled from the tomb had quickly turned to joy as they realised what had happened thanks to the message of the angel. You may note that they weren’t in the least bit phased by the angel nor by their subsequent meeting with Jesus. Despite the best efforts of heaven’s special effects department, it all seems perfectly ordinary. And that may be because not only was the day of resurrection dawning but also a realization of what it was all about.
The Gospels are littered with preparatory teaching by Jesus of what would happen to him – that he would be arrested; that he would be condemned to death; that he would suffer and die; and that he would rise again on the third day. Unfortunately, the disciples were not very good at joined-up writing and thinking outside the box. Only after the Resurrection did it all fall into place and then, when it did, what an amazing transformation took place in their lives. But these two women and other intimate followers of Jesus seemed to have sussed it all out. Certainly in Matthew they hadn’t brought spices to anoint and embalm his body and they weren’t expecting to do anything. All we are told is that they went to see the tomb. No other reason than that. Though from what happened it is clear that God had a reason from bringing them there. A reminder that much in the Gospel is a result of God’s initiative. Everything is part of a Divine Plan – a Plan which embraced and involved all sorts of people and goes on doing so today.
What is this Plan?
On Friday night, those who came to Prayers around the Cross heard the beautiful and ancient poem The Dream of the Rood. It is from Anglo-Saxon times and one of the earliest Christian poems in the English Language. It tells of a dream in which the writer meets the Cross of Christ which tells its remarkable story. At the point in the poem where Jesus is brought to be Crucified, the Cross relates:
Then the young hero (who was God Almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
He climbed onto the lofty gallows-tree,
Bold in the sight of many watching men,
When he intended to redeem mankind.
Everything in this poem tells of a warrior
leaping forward into battle – the
young hero, resolute, strong in heart, climbing to the gallows-tree;
bold with clear intention.
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
He climbed onto the lofty gallows-tree,
Bold in the sight of many watching men,
When he intended to redeem mankind.
The poem itself belongs to a period in English history where epic tales of bravery and of knights riding into battle were common. But it captures something really important about our Lord’s Crucifixion. The whole Passion drama from Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to his appearance to his followers after the Resurrection needs to be seen as a sacred drama in which God in Jesus is not only the principal actor but also the author. God is always in control. Wicked men, be they Pharisees, our crooked disciples or fickle crowds or indecisive and cruel Roman Governors are the actors who in an odd way it may seem, do God’s bidding.
I was fascinated by something Sister Wendy Beckett, the nun who has interpreted art to Christians, said in a television programme on Friday night. Asked whether Jesus would have forgiven Judas, she said, “oh yes, most definitely.” But surely not! Judas has been painted in the blackest colour of the betrayer just as the Jewish Religious Leaders have been shown to be mercilessly vindictive. Without any of these and more, there could have been no Crucifixion and therefore no Resurrection to celebrate today. And God needed a Crucifixion to show us something categorical that we could no longer dispute. It’s summed up in something Jesus once said – I, if I be lifted up, will draw everyone to myself.
What the Plan of God was and what the Crucifixion did was to show us in the deepest possible way how much God truly loves us and how he wants to claim us as his own. He wants us, the raw material of humanity, to be those who are, by grace, divined into his Kingdom – a Kingdom of love and peace and justice and freedom and mercy and joy and abundant, vibrant, life.
All that is possible to experience here and now but as we do, our horizons widen, our hopes increase, our vision expands and the possibilities for our lives become endless. We stop living half lives. And half lives are those lived without God, without Jesus, without the Holy Spirit and without love. And we live without love when we act in unloving ways – when we treat each other badly, when we are self-absorbed (a state in which we need no other lover than ourself), when we sin, when we despair, when we live without hope. And when we think that we, and our personal salvation, are all that matter.
Christians may think that they are here to save themselves but they are only truly Christian when they go out into the world’s brokenness and save others – not through hell-fire preaching nor by sending people on guilt trips, nor by a pile of pious words and sentiments.
A long time ago at a Conference of Christians in 1923, the Bishop of Zanzibar, Frank Weston, gave a final rallying speech in which he said that as Christians we have a duty to go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.
We become truly children of the resurrection when we stop worrying about our own needs and our own salvation – and when we do our part in healing our broken world and the broken people within it. For, surprisingly, that brokenness will always include us. But we needn’t worry about that because God has already taken care of it. He has drawn us into the Gospel net of his love and he has brought us, at a great cost to himself, into his Kingdom of Love. And we will never fully understand that until we see the Cross, not as something we have caused but as something we have gained. God chose to show us the ultimate expression of love.
Greater love has no one, than to lay down
one’s life for one’s Friends.
Oh yes, you need to know that – you are God’s
friends.
He loves you that much!
So, like the women in today’s Gospel, you can run to meet your Risen
Lord, and worship and touch him and love him.
That’s what God makes possible in His Easter story which from Manger to
Cross to the Empty Tomb is a love story with humanity – with you and
me.
What did Jesus do on Good Friday. What’s his plan for Easter Day. Very simply – it is to show you how much he loves you. If you can grasp that, you will fight like the young hero of the Dream of the Rood to destroy all that is not love in your life and in the part of the world over which you have any influence.
Don’t have a joyful Easter Day! Have a loving Easter Life.
That’s what God’s message is for you.